Sen. Feinstein: Whom Do You Represent?

On Thursday, Sen. Feinstein kept alive a provision giving immunity to telecommunications companies who abetted the Bush Administration's illegal spying program. Feinstein, a member of the Judiciary Committee, had earlier voted against Sen. Russ Feingold's proposal that would have stripped immunity from the legislation. (The House had already approved legislation rejecting immunity for telecoms while strengthening and expanding court oversight of surveillance conducted outside the United States.)
Although Feinstein reportedly wants to consider compromise proposals, it begs the question of why is she willing to defend the principle of illegality.
Surely if the telecoms have broken the law in concert with the Administration, they ought to be held accountable. Instead, she echoes the sentiments of Sen. Rockefeller, that telecoms "should not be dragged through the courts for their help with national security." She argues that such suits are unfair, that telecoms can't fully defend themselves since the issue (surveillance) involves state secrets.
It's worth noting here that the 9th Circuit ruled that the Administration has provided "a cascade of acknowledgments and information . . . [such] that the state secrets privilege does not bar the very subject matter of this action."
Others have written (here and here) that Feinstein's embrace of telecom immunity might be a reflection of her personal connections with the powerful.
These relationships are, perhaps, significant in understanding why she takes positions on issues and legislation contrary to the desires not only of her Democratic liberal constituency, but a broad cross-section of the American public.
What can be said of a Democratic senator with a supposedly liberal political philosophy who consistently votes in support of contrary, fundamentally anti-democratic policies? After all, a broad swath of Americans (liberal and Democratic, or not) rejects retroactive immunity for telecom companies, rejects executive overreach, expresses their revulsion at a wink-and-nudge torture policy, and forcefully repudiates Administration policies that ride roughshod over the basic principles of our constitutional republic. And certainly a large number of Californians don't approve of this administration's policies.
Yet that same public finds that a senator who ought to be in the vanguard of protecting the Constitution and defending the public against an aggressive, law-breaking executive branch, instead stands up for the lawbreaker.
We should remind ourselves that the Bush Administration's disregard of FISA law, the disregard abetted by telecoms and endorsed by Feinstein, is not intended to capture terrorists more effectively, but to arrogantly, unconstitutionally increase its own powers at the expense of the Congress, the law and the American public.
FISA never hindered intelligence agencies in their work. It only required the government to obtain a warrant to do so and even that bar was not set terribly high.
It is this that the Bush Administration arrogantly rejects: the requirement--any requirement--that demands the executive be answerable even in the slightest to another authority, that it, in fact, obey the law.
And it is this that Feinstein supports--a branch of government answerable to no one. That is not the definition, by any standard, of a nation of laws.
That is tyranny.